


tender & yet, bloodied

by lonelyghosts



Series: god's last angels [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: F/F, Fantastic Racism, Genocide, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Polyamory, Self-Esteem Issues, Slavery, The Dark Side of the Force, light side of the force, listen juhani is a wonderful soul and i love her and she deserves better than the jedi council, the jedi council sucks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-18 04:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10609398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyghosts/pseuds/lonelyghosts
Summary: "I can't help feeling that I did not deserve this."[Or: how Juhani learned she was worthy of love, told via transcripts of the Ebon Hawk's video log.]





	1. video log #1

**Author's Note:**

> im playing a light side run-through of kotor and damn. juhani is my beautiful child and i love her <3
> 
> also this is v cathartic for me because i have lots of anger issues due to Trauma™ and so does juhani and you know what? i want more stories about victims killing their abusers instead of them "rising above" what happened and i hate the jedi council for being abusive enablers who basically destroyed my daughter's life

STATE NAME & IDENTIFY FINGERPRINT

PERSONNEL: PASSENGER: JUHANI. DESIGNATION VERIFIED. ACCESS GRANTED.

ACCESS DATABASE?

CREATE VIDEO LOG?

* * *

"I left my old Padawan log on Dantooine," Juhani says. She is tall and thin, but in the night, curled up in her chair in front of the camera, she is so small; her body a knot of tension so deeply rooted it seems impossible to untie. Her face is lit only by the monitor she speaks into. 

"I suppose I didn't want to taint it. That was before and if I touched it I feel that somehow the thoughts recorded within would become... tainted. The girl who wrote in that log is dead and I'm afraid I don't wish to sully her name." 

She laughs, and the sadness in it is unmistakeable. It is a deep purr in her throat, choked and heavy. Laughing does not sound natural in her voice. Her ears move with the rhythm of her breath, twitching back and forth, back and forth. She traces her extinguished lightsaber with the tips of her clawed fingers, nails catching on the ridges of Cerxes' fang.

"That's an irrational thought, isn't it?" Juhani whispers, looking up from her 'saber. "My master... Quatra taught me that such a thing is to be avoided. As Jedi we cannot indulge ourselves in the emotions of our consciousness; such a thing leads us to put ourselves before our duty. But I don't think this is irrational. This feels too... real. Visceral. Like the Force feels when we trace it in the air, pulling deep in our gut."

She looks down at her lap. "I tried to voice these thoughts to her, when we were on Dantooine. I said I felt... vulnerable. I told her that I felt the girl I was... she'd been killed. And Quatra told me she would come back in time. She told me that she forgave me for... for what I did. For my fall."

Juhani breathes deep for a few moments. In the quiet she is not alone; there are the whispers of bedsheets as the other crew members turn and toss in their bunks. Juhani opens her mouth and closes it again. Only a few yards behind her is Bastila's bed; the Jedi Sentinel's face is half-lit. Her jaw is wreathed in darkness and her eyes are closed, peaceful in the very faint light.

At last Juhani speaks, and when she does her voice is teary. "Is it bad that I am still... hurt? That I wish she would've asked for  _my_ forgivenesss, for what she did?"

"I do forgive her, of course. That's the Jedi way," she hastens to clarify, her eyes wide and full of fear. "And I don't... I'm grateful for her forgiveness. But I wish that she'd acknowledge that what she said had a part in my fall."

She sighs softly, wipes her eyes. "I'm probably asking for too much, anyways. I'm lucky that Padawan Maia allowed me on the mission at all; she is a generous and kind woman and I am grateful to her. I have to prove to her that I can be a good companion." She glances behind her and catches sight of Bastila, and her face hardens a little. "One just as good as Bastila Shan."

Juhani turns back to the camera. The hardness in her face has softened, and there is a dreaminess in her eyes as she talks. "She's so terribly beautiful. Maia I mean. And she believes in me. Believes that I can be good enough to do what she needs me to do."

A hesitation. Her long white incisors bite down on her lower lip, unsure; she doesn't know what to say. 

"I... In a way, she reminds me of Belaya. I think... perhaps, with Maia's guidance... I can redeem myself."

 


	2. entry #2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tattooine.

STATE NAME & IDENTIFY FINGERPRINT

PERSONNEL: PASSENGER: JUHANI. DESIGNATION VERIFIED. ACCESS GRANTED.

ACCESS DATABASE?

CREATE VIDEO LOG?

* * *

The video feed is fuzzy with sand, but Juhani is covered in it; she shakes her head once, twice, spraying bits of dust and dirt onto the camera, before combing her hair through with her long, pointed fingers tipped with clawlike nails.

"We're on Tattooine," she says at last, after cleaning herself up best she can. "Have I ever mentioned my intense dislike of sand before? Taris was barren, full of glittering skyscrapers and slums; but there was no sand. Cathar is not sandy either; the environment is full of grass and dirt and forest. But I have never been on Cathar, or rather I do not remember Cathar, so..." 

She looks down. It is cruel, she thinks; that she has never seen her homeworld. Perhaps, after this is over, if she lives, she will find her home, see if any Cathar still dwell upon the planet. She was only a baby when they fled home; her memories of her family are fuzzy and blurry. She would like to meet another Cathar.

Juhani knows that line of thought and where it leads. She casts her mind around for something, anything else.

"Maia remains my favorite member of the crew," she says, quirking her lips up in a half-smile. "She is quite gentle with me, though I question her decisions sometimes; we returned to the ship today with a droid that is frankly, quite frightening. I dislike him. His name is HK-47 and he has a... fascination with murder, though he's registered as a protocol droid. But he is necessary to make peace with the Sandpeople, so I suppose I shall just have to deal with him. Luckily he remains near the swoop bike, far away from my quarters."

"The worst of the passengers is Ordo. I know that I mustn't allow my own personal experiences at the hands of the Mandalorians to cloud my judgement, neither allow them to make sweeping generalizations; but even thinking objectively he is despicable; if I've met anyone who embodies the most dangerous principles of the Dark Side he is it. He kills for the sake of killing; for the 'heat of battle'. He pretends that it is 'honorable', but nothing was honorable about destroying hundreds of worlds!" Juhani's voice raises at the end of her sentence, and behind her an arm flops out of the bunk above her.

Juhani freezes, silent. 

A sleepy voice drifts from above her. "That you, Ju?"

"Go back to sleep, Mission," she says instead of answering. Luckily enough Mission does, rolling back into bed and muttering something about an Aqualish walking into a bar. Juhani breathes a sigh of relief.

"The others I have no particularly divisive opinion of, more or less," Juhani resumes, dropping her voice to a quiet murmur. "I was afraid it would be similar to how it was on Dantooine; that I would be somewhat lonely, divided from the others by my circumstances, but I have made some tentative friends here. Bastila is an admirable woman, though I don't believe she enjoys my presence. I cannot blame her."

She glances at the door of the cabin in the direction where Bastila's room is. It's on the other end of the ship, directly across from Juhani's room, and a blush coats her cheeks. 

"But if I admit it to myself..." she says quietly as the red deepens, "I am quite fond of her. I would like to become her friend. That is unrealistic; as Mission would say, there is about as much chance of that as there is of reformation of the Hutt slave trade. Although she'd probably be more crass about it."

Juhani's face twists bitterly, but she wipes the disappointment from her face and manages a weak smile. "All the more motivation for me to redeem myself, I suppose," she jokes, but it falls flat in the silence of the cabin. 

She changes the subject after a brief silence. "Carth is... annoying. He talks about how awful his life is, about how sad everything that happened to him was. But all of us have lost something, and to act as if he is worst off is patronizing at best. Luckily enough he doesn't seem to particularly like me either, which I'm afraid I'm not entirely upset about."

"Mission.... well." Juhani looks back up at the loose arm falling from the bed above her and grins. "She's wonderful. The others don't trust me but she- perhaps by virtue of her age- is quite content to be around me. She's teaching me pazaak. Apparently I'm good at it? I don't know. That's what Mission says, but she always seems to win no matter how well I'm doing. Then again, she is a lot more experienced than I."

Her grin softens into a more genuine smile as she reflects upon her friendship with Mission. "She's quite the girl. I must confess I don't understand why her brother ever would have left her. If I were her sister I would not have abandoned her."

There's love in her eyes, a soft, protective love- the sort that Juhani's been taught against. It makes you weak, Quatra would have said. But it's the kind of love a Jedi showed to her on the way to a war and she thinks maybe Mission needs that kind of love. Something to protect her. 

She snaps back to the camera, wiping her hair out of her eyes self-consciously. "The others.... Zaalbar is a lovely Wookie but he is not very open about who he is or his past; I suppose he has every right to. T3-M4 is very polite. But he is also a droid, and a very quiet one at that. When I was being taught Binary I was... inattentive to say the least. I was finally getting the hang of it when, well, I hurt Quatra and... I had to leave the Enclave. I haven't had a chance to learn since."

Juhani's eyes darken reflexively at the mention of Quatra; the mentor who had loved her so much and yet treated her without any care. The one who had saved her and the one who had driven her away from the Jedi. 

"I miss her," she says quietly. "Her and Belaya."

She wipes at her glistening eyes, trying to smile, but this- this is too much, and her face crumples into a sob. For minutes on end, she sits there, sobbing, her amber eyes red with broken blood vessels, hands clutching at her sides, trying not to think of how much she's lost.

After there are no more tears she speaks.

"But Maia needs me more than they ever did. And I have to be strong for her. The way she's strong for me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've always done my playthroughs like this (not counting dantooine)
> 
>   * tattooine
>   * kashyyyk
>   * korriban
>   * manaan
> 

> 
> so that's the way that it'll go in my fic
> 
> obviously ppl will move from planet to planet to complete side quests, so they won't move from planet to planet and never return, but if you want to know how the progress of the quest overall is going then keep that in mind
> 
> generally this will follow the steps of juhani's quests, both personal & historical.

**Author's Note:**

> the cerxes' fang thing is from a mod i use; it's the name of juhani's lightsaber.
> 
> revan is in this fic, named maia zvik; i have an oc board for her on pinterest.


End file.
